Red Raiders end first regular season under Kingsbury with whimper in loss to Longhorns

Texas Tech's Kliff Kingsbury walks the sideline during their game on Thursday in Austin. (Stephen Spillman/AJ Media)

AUSTIN — Maybe Texas Tech can win a bowl game to salvage Kliff Kingsbury’s first season as head coach.

As of now, it’s a year that ended with a whimper.

Tech dropped its regular-season finale 41-16 to Texas on Thursday night as a national television audience and a less-than-full house at Royal-Memorial Stadium looked on. Texas (8-3, 7-1 in the Big 12) shook off an early special-teams touchdown by Tech (7-5, 4-5), and then receiver Mike Davis and the Longhorns’ running game and pass rush gave the Red Raiders a beatdown.

For the second time in three years, the Red Raiders finished the regular season with a five-game losing streak. This one came after a 7-0 start that lifted Tech to No. 9 and No. 10 in the national rankings.

“We played good teams,” Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “We just have been making too many mistakes against good teams. We got away with it early on in the year against teams that weren’t as good. Then five good teams in a row, we didn’t play our best game. That’s what happens.”

Davis caught two touchdown passes against Tech for the second year in a row, including a 47-yarder that gave Texas the lead for good late in the first quarter. Running backs Malcolm Brown and Joe Bergeron both gave Tech trouble as the Longhorns rushed for 281 yards.

And Tech’s ability to rally was muted by a Texas pass rush that frazzled freshman quarterback Baker Mayfield. The Longhorns racked up nine sacks, and Mayfield didn’t have a touchdown pass before he was lifted in favor of Michael Brewer in the fourth quarter.

“It was tough,” Kingsbury said. “They had a good front and we didn’t hold up very well. They weren’t bringing too many to pressure us. It was just our guys getting beat.”

Texas had a 20-10 lead at halftime and put the game out of reach on quarterback Case McCoy’s 1-yard touchdown in the third quarter and his 7-yard TD pass to Davis early in the fourth.

Michael Brewer replaced Mayfield in the fourth quarter and threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Jace Amaro. He completed 7 of 8 passes for 65 yards and was sacked twice.

Tech punter Ryan Erxleben ran 51 yards for a touchdown on the Red Raiders’ second series. Erxleben grabbed a high snap, then sprinted right and cut through a corridor of blockers outside the numbers and on into the end zone.

“The punter called that one, actually,” Kingsbury said. “He saw something and took off with it.”

Erxleben, son of a former Longhorns’ All-American, was a defensive end at Austin’s Lake Travis High School. The euphoria the Red Raiders felt from his unexpected touchdown run didn’t last, though.

Though the Longhorns took some time to get cranked up, they rallied ahead 20-7 on two field goals from Lou Groza Award finalist Anthony Fera sandwiched among Bergeron and Davis touchdowns.

With UT at the Tech 47 late in the first quarter, McCoy faked a handoff and an end-around while Davis sneaked behind the Tech secondary. McCoy stepped back and made an easy throw to Davis, who had cornerback Justis Nelson and safety Tanner Jacobson in his wake, for a 10-7 lead.

“We had a safety bite down on a fake,” McCoy said, “and I just threw it as far as I could.”

A Fera field goal made it 13-7 at 8:18 before halftime, and Bergeron’s 12-yard touchdown at the 3:07 mark capped a seven-play, 80-yard drive.

Fera’s field goal came one play after a lengthy delay for medical staffers to attend to Bruce Jones. On the third down, McCoy flipped a pass that went off the hands of Brown. Jones, the Tech cornerback hit Brown just as the pass went by, his head and shoulder slamming into Brown’s thigh.

Physicians and trainers stabilized Jones’ head and neck before he was lifted onto a motorized cart and taken off. Tech officials said he suffered a concussion, but will be OK.

Tech cut it to 20-10 when Ryan Bustin kicked a field goal as time ran out in the half. Tech had moved into scoring position with the help of a short pass that DeAndre Washington turned into 32 yards and two personal-foul penalties. One was a roughing-the-punter on fourth down in Tech territory, the other a roughing-the-passer after a third-down pass from the Texas 25 fell incomplete. Tech made it to the 8 before Mayfield misfired on second down and was sacked on third down.